Posted on 12/29/2001 12:09:43 AM PST by Starmaker
While Ayn Rand, the author of Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, and essays on politics, culture and philosophy, was a great advocate of free market capitalism and a significant anti-communist, she also made mistakes in her thinking which are presently being slavishly parroted by her devout coterie of followers at the Ayn Rand Institute. While Rand publicly championed the individual, she privately insisted, according to former close associates, on a high degree of conformity within her inner circle. This is reflected today in her followers, who call themselves Objectivists, and who tend to spout her dogma and mimic her mannerisms in a fashion that is at times positive and at times unbecoming.
A case in point is the recent article "Why Christmas Should be More Commercial" by Dr. Leonard Peikoff who referrers to himself as the foremost authority on Objectivism and is the founder of the Ayn Rand Institute. While Peikoff revels in the commercial aspects of Christmas, he sneers at "assorted Nativity tales and altruist injunctions (e.g., love thy neighbor) that no one takes seriously." I would beg to differ. Most of us, to varying degrees, enjoy the commercial aspect of Christmas and gift giving and see no contradiction between this and the religious aspect. In this season this year, which comes on the tail of hijackers crashing planes into buildings, thousands of grieving families, friends, and a grieving nation, and anthrax in the mail, thinking about G-d, and loving thy neighbor contributes greatly to a more significant sense of meaning and purpose in life, certainly more so than a mere commercial transaction. I don´t agree with Peikoff and his extreme atheism, I think people do take these things very seriously.
The Objectivists hold to the irrational theory of evolution which is that man somehow evolved from the primordial ooze. They dismiss as a superstition the more rational idea, in my opinion, that the creation of life, with all of its incredible facets, had to involve a supernatural and divine aspect. They reject the theory of creation not because it is irrational but because the Atheist Ayn Rand rejected it. As an admirer of reason, I find the creation theory to be much more rational while at the same time providing a varied and nuance sense of life, certainly more so than the morally neutral idea that man somehow miraculously evolved out of the mud.
In his Christmas article, Peikoff asserts "America´s tragedy is that its intellectual leaders have typically tried to replace happiness with guilt by insisting that the spiritual meaning of Christmas is religion and self sacrifice for Tiny Tim or his equivalent." Unless I´m missing something, America´s "intellectual leaders" haven´t insisted on religion any time recently but rather an atheistic, morally neutral, scientific socialist culture that claims to be based on "reason." As far as American religion being an advocate of "self sacrifice," this is just nonsense. Self-sacrifice is a policy of the abovementioned intellectual leaders who have no intention of sacrificing anything themselves, only the fruit of the labor of others. Religion tends to advocate voluntary tithing for the needy and private charities.
Peikoff wants to "take the Christ out of Christmas, and turn the holiday into a guiltlessly egotistic, pro-reason, this-worldly, commercial celebration." His utopian idea of happiness seems to be a world where man is not fettered by such obstacles as guilt or worry about anything but the here and now. Much of the article venerates earth-worshipping paganism, which is where many Atheists, hungering for meaning and purpose, seem to end up. Ayn Rand and the Objectivists made great contributions to capitalism, freedom and individual rights but, unfortunately, that contribution is somewhat eclipsed by a darker side. Perhaps Rand was more influenced by her own Stalinist high school and College education than she realized. Either way, it´s a shame that such glaring mistakes threaten to discredit such important work.
I think that the Bible and Evolution are compatible. It never specifies in the Bible whether a day is 24 of our hours, or 20 billion of our years. It's well possible both are true.
But if seven of God's days equal 15 billion of our years, then surely most of the stuff mentioned in the Genesis account would have been created on Day 7.
These things continue to evolve through different forms, of course 2 at a time, until they bring forth a predecessor of man, of course at every evolutionary turn 2 at a time, but then a line dies out (like Cro-Magnon), or(Piltdown Man) but wait, there are other primates, these are the ones that will evolve towards man, of course at least 2 of a kind, at the same moment in life. The odds of this happening are nil, not long, not unlikely, but 0.
Nothing anyone can say will ever convince me different, and of course evolution itself is unprovable as well.
Just because man can use his mind to calculate odds, does not mean the the thing he calculates could happen, ever will.
It is statistically possible that with all of the ingredients in my fridge (eggs, chocolate chips) and in my cupboard (flour, brown sugar and shortening), that if lightning strikes my house, at the precise moment an earthquake spills these ingredients together, I may go home to freshly baked Toll-House cookies,( huhuhuhuhu chocolate chip cookies) but I wouldn't suddenly believe in an evolution when I saw the results. I would be looking for THE COOK to thank, how about you?
By the strong evidence we have that the Earth is about 10 billion years younger than the universe at large. The Earth simply didn't exist "in the beginning", nor indeed for a great while afterwards.
But even the soil didn't exist before the sun formed. The Earth was a molten ball of lava when the sun became hot enough to warm any soil within reach.
The sun is 4 or 5 billion years old. Grasses only appear extremely late in the fossil record, less than 37 million years ago. The dinosaurs were long dead before they appeared. There was plenty of time for their seeds to grow in a hospitable environment, had they been lying around...not that they would have germinated after so many billions of years, and not that they would have survived the inhospitable environment that existed on the planet Earth for an extended period after its formation.
(Notice how he at least put on his best wife-beater T-shirt)
SDI SSgt. Hartman: "...A jelly donut?! Are you allowed to eat jelly donuts Private Morse?!"
Private Morse: "Sir, no sir!"
SDI SSgt. Hartman: "And why NOT, Private Morse?!"
Private Morse: "Sir, because I'm too heavy si--"
SDI SSgt. Hartman: "BECAUSE YOU ARE A DISGUSTING FATBODY, PRIVATE MORSE!!!"
1st the heavens and the Earth, 2nd was light, and motion to cause the day and night to alternate. 3rd The Earth itself is brought up from under an ocean. 4th the grass and herbs, and trees with fruit.5th The waters bring forth the moving creature that has life, and fowl 6th The living creatures like cattle, and snakes and beasts of the Earth 7th man comes. Now how is that sequence different than the theories of evolution, except for an originator, or creator? Go to Genesis in the Bible, and look for yourself, it is a logical progression, written millenia ago.
By the strong evidence we have that the Earth is about 10 billion years younger than the universe at large. The Earth simply didn't exist "in the beginning", nor indeed for a great while afterwards.
Genesis 1:1 is an opening sentence, simply stating that God created heaven and earth. Verse 2 then leads into a somewhat sketchy description of the development of the earth and life on it. In verse 2, the author states,"Now the earth was without shape and empty, and darkness was over the surface of the watery deep, but the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the water. This statement clearly indicates that the account to follow is from after the earth was formed and actually accurately describes the early earth, in that the earth was initially covered in water and the atmoshpere was opague.
Reagrding you earlier point that the Genesis account states that plant life existed before the sun, I think you are once again confusing the author's frame of reference for the account. The author in verse two clearly states that his frame of reference is the surface of the earth, so that when he reports in verse 3, that God say,"Let there be light", he simply means light became visible on the surface of the earth, meaning the atmoshpere became translucent. The Hebrew verb in verse 3, means 'to make appear what already exists' and is not the verb used in verse 1 which means 'to create something new'. Likewise in verses 14-19 when God apparently makes the sun and moon after he has created plant life in verse 11, what is really intended is that after plant life is created in verse 11, the sun and moon and stars become visible from the surface of the earth, which simply means that the atmosphere transformed from being translucent to transparent after the first appearance of plant life on earth. The Genesis 1 account is indeed very sketchy compared to modern science, but is amazingly consistent with modern science nonetheless.
It's not like a dirty word you have to censor.
What am I missing?
People dont have “mistakes in their thinking”, as this article states. People think exactly as they think. What a ludicrous notion, the mistaken thought. Bah! I stopped reading this article after that gross blunder.
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